Scrivener's Prophecy

Week 2, Day 9

6

DEC/11

Ravengrow, Day 9

The burial took place while I slept, I suppose. When I woke, Viktor was back at the house, drinking tea with bloody axe in tow. Everyone was rounded up around the breakfast table looking spent, Kendra looking mightily confused in her hostessy way of not wanting to upset anyone. I could only feel slightly upset about re-murdering her rightful father the night before.

And then back to the prison, oh goody.

Creepy gates, check. Pitoned doors, check. Way through the audience chambers, check. Daunting entrance into The Dungeons Below? Check. I made a good enough show of cleaning off the lenses of my goggles and lighting a torch so as not to be the first down the gaping hole. Kazare was to be the first idiot.

Because apparently I’d done such an excellent job of looking preoccupied, by the time my boots lighted onto the refuse below, the screaming and commotion had stopped. I dusted off my jacket and we sallied forth into … what could only make sense in a burned ruined prison dungeon but a room full of supine skeletons.

One thing I have learned about creepy prison supine skeletons is that they don’t lay about for long after living breathing entities have entered the room.

Another thing I have learned about the aforementioned recently re-mobile creepy prison skeletons is that they are highly susceptible to bullets. Shattered bones here, shattered bones there, and what should follow but – LOGICALLY – a fiery headless skeleton carrying a large axe!

Why does this make sense in my head?

To wit: fiery headless skeletons carrying axes are also highly susceptible to bullets.
Of note: they are also prone to exploding. This is why it is good to use firearms from range.

So which hallway do we choose to follow to our doom? Naturally, the one from which the fiery headless axe-wielding skeleton just exited. Viktor was so excited about this that he went into some form of enraptured seizure, screaming in his Ustalavan accent about broken legs and the like. I’ve heard about religious experiences, and really? Check please.

So Viktor in all of his fevered insight walks into the room from his seizure vision and calls out the name of The Lopper, which – of course – calls the monster leaping from his oubliette axe at the ready to do what The Loppers do best: lop off heads. Korrik spends the majority of the time throwing godliness at him, and Viktor uses his cursed axe to good measure – against its former owner.

People start bleeding from everywhere, something has to be done about this and Korrik is too damned busy dousing The Lopper with his godliness so I fire my gun into the air and smack the barrel against the bleeding wound.

What I did not expect was a “Thanks, lady, may I have another” from my targets. Odd. Mildly disgusting.

In short, we dispatched the bastard with his own tools (held by Viktor) and Korrik’s godliness. Leave it to the holy men to do all the work.

We wandered some more about the prison, avoiding the supposed “Nevermore” where Heen was hiding. How appropriate.

Screaming skulls and some whacks upon the head later and the so-called tragic Marauder was done away with. But if you ask me, anyone who murders their wife and then goes on a twenty person killing spree to re-make her skeleton is a sick bastard and deserves none of my pity.

Throw him to the sharks.

More entertaining than a dizzy Trig was the fact that Iamjos ducked away into the winch room to hide from the entire encounter.

Code states that cowards are a liability. When I confronted the lilly bellied sap about it, he just looked at me with shaking hands, muttering some excuse.

He could only redeem himself later by rushing into an Iron Maiden after his imagination.
Are all wizards like this? So scared of their own shadows that they chase their own dreams to their doom? We destroyed the thing, and found Warden Hochran’s corpse upon the rack. Now there is a man who deserves my pity. A man who’d done nothing but attempt to preserve order among chaos, and to find his corpse in the way we did.

Disgusting.

His hands were rather enamored with Viktor’s legs, though.

After such a discovery, we could only return to the town. Iamjos punctured by imaginary holes, feeling somewhat … vivified by what we’d done.

We return tomorrow to The Nevermore. If we’re up to it.
Really, if Iamjos can gain his composure enough. I suggest a hearty meal of grow the Hell up.